Theresa May at the World Economic Forum in Davos: no easy ride.
Photograph: Ruben Sprich/Reuters

Davos is normally one of the easier gigs of the year for the prime minister. It is the perfect stage on which to trumpet what HM Government is doing about the burning issue of the day: developing country debt, climate change or getting tough on tax havens. In recent years, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron have all gone down a storm at the Glastonbury for global capitalism.

Theresa May, aided by her chancellor Philip Hammond, had a much tougher time this year. They were the equivalent of a folk duo turning up at a heavy metal concert, faced with an audience that was one part apprehensive, one part indifferent and one part openly hostile.

May responded to the challenge by channelling her inner Angela Merkel. The prime minister even appeared to have been getting fashion tips from the German chancellor as she took the stage in black trousers and a cream jacket.

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Her message, too, was designed to go down well in Berlin, Brussels and Paris. Britain had no intention, she said, of seeking to torpedo the European project. Far from it. The UK wanted Europe to thrive after Brexit and was relaxed about being an outward looking, multicultural society. May’s hymn to the benefits of an industrial strategy and her insistence that market forces could not solve every problem was positively Germanic.

In a reversal of roles, it was left to Hammond (in his trademark suit) to show the government’s other side. He reinforced May’s comments about the need to create a global Britain that was open for business but left open the possibility that the government would retaliate if the rest of the EU decided it wanted to punish the UK for voting to leave.

Should political retribution triumph over economic logic, Hammond told a UK business lunch, Britain would do whatever it took to remain competitive. “That is not a threat, it’s a statement of the blindingly obvious.”

The rest of the EU may not see it that way. May and Hammond had two aims in Davos. The first was to convince UK business leaders they had a plan, an objective largely achieved even among those that think tough times lie ahead. The second was to smooth things over with businesses and politicians in the rest of Europe, which has been far less successful. May and Hammond seem oblivious to the current level of hostility towards the UK.

Nor is the May-Hammond “iron fist in the velvet glove” routine likely to make the rest of Europe soften its hard line in the negotiations. Why? Because there is an obvious inconsistency in the prime minister calling for a bigger role for the state to ensure globalisation works for those who voted for Brexit; and the chancellor saying that if the worst came to the worst Britain could slash taxes, have a bonfire of regulations and be western Europe’s Hong Kong. The EU 27 will see scorched earth as an empty threat. Which it is.